Denitza

In her acrylic paintings, Denitza borrows the abstract expressionist technique of motion painting to create the skeletons of imagined urban settings. This initial corporeal engagement with the panel provides a foundation of formal abstraction that gives way to the pictorial detail of the finished tableau. The artist describes her images as "X-rays" of her own visual imagination, fed by her fascination with the connection between human and habitat. She sees urban landscapes as revealing states of arrested development in which spaces of ruin-dilapidated apartments, condemned lots overtaken by graffiti and debris-often endure alongside the slick gleam of modern architecture, the highest emblem of human invention. Denitza uses enamel to simulate the experience of the human eye as it scans the cosmopolis; for her, to traverse a city is to find oneself awash in the glossy reflected light of windows, cars, metal and bulbs of every hue. As she describes it, 'the visual noise of color and light changes everything to abstraction.